Brian Littleton of ShareASale posted an entertaining look back at the affiliate marketing industry with his Top 10 Affiliate Marketing Moments for this Decade.

It’s a fun look back at significant happenings for affiliate marketers over the years.

It’s humbling to see all of the mentions of Affiliate Summit in there, and hard to believe the first Affiliate Summit was over six years ago already.

Back in 2003, we maxed out at 200 people. As we close in on Affiliate Summit West 2010, the 14th Affiliate Summit, we’re expecting 4,000.

One of the key moments Brian mentioned was when then LinkShare Chairman Stephen Messer delivered a lunchtime talk at the first Affiliate Summit to took place in Las Vegas back in 2005.

Stephen Messer discussed how Google was a competitor/threat to affiliate programs. Many in the audience scoffed, and Messer turned out to be spot on. David Lewis wrote about the Messer talk at the time on ReveNews.

And here is a shot of my partner, Missy Ward, with Brian Littleton from that same show.

One milestone I would have added to the list was the Performance Marketing Summit on adware, which tool place back in 2002 at the Yale Club in NYC.

At this meeting, networks, merchants, and affiliates got together to work on industry practices and policies regarding the use of adware.

There will be a new networking opportunity at Affiliate Summit West 2010 called the Vertical Exchange.

The Vertical Exchange will be an opportunity for affiliates, merchants and networks to find one another by vertical to network and work our deals.

There is no sponsorship or anything – we will have designated areas for verticals, so anybody interested in a given vertical can just go to the table with the sign for that vertical to meet other folks.

This networking event is taking place 2:00pm-3:00pm on Monday, January 18, 2010 and it is only open to Gold and Platinum pass holders.

I had a fun chat with Deb Carney on her AffiliateABCs podcast the other day about my early days in affiliate marketing.

This discussion came out of a link I Tweeted recently for an article I wrote in 2000 on the history of affiliate marketing.

We touched on the origins of the industry, as well as my start as an affiliate and an affiliate manager in 1997 at Medsite.com.

Back when I started as an affiliate, I joined the Amazon.com affiliate program and created a horrible site on AOL, which was a shoddy guide to New York City. I got my first domain, velocitynyc.com, on August 25, 1998.

This was an online version of a zine, Velocity NYC, that I was publishing offline for a few years.

“The writing was on the wall for Shawn Collins when he named his year-and-a-half-old quarterly zine, Velocity N.Y.C. Walking past a stairway, Collins noticed graffiti spelling out the title of his soon-to-be zine. Like the graffiti, Velocity N.Y.C. is a spontaneous expression of one life in the urban jungle. Collins ruminates on bachelor parties, stuff in his mailbox and the zine’s most reprinted feature, movies that affected his life.” – FOLIO

“A wonderfully sophisticated zine that captures the energy and style of New York City life. Shawn has done a lot, experiences a lot, and has a lot to say. He doesn’t come off as preachy or pretentious, just genuinely friendly.” – Factsheet 5

This domain is now used for the Velocity NYC Press, a book publishing imprint from Affiliate Summit.

My second domain, babylounge.com, was registered on July 19, 1999, and the initial purpose was to manually create online birth announcements, after lots of friends and family enjoyed the one I created for my first daughter months before.

These online birth announcements were available in a free version (with affiliate ads) or a few paid versions.

As of today, I’ve got 152 domains, and I couldn’t even tell you how many have been affiliate sites, or are currently affiliate sites. Plus, there are many domains that I grabbed for a year or two for projects and let go.

Anyhow, the podcast also gets into my experiences in the early days as an affiliate manager and it’s a fun trip down memory lane for the resources and such from back then. Have a listen to episode 19 of Affiliate ABCs to hear how things used to be in affiliate marketing.

While I was sitting in church this morning, the Pastor was speaking about David and Goliath and how Saul gave David his own armor, but David didn’t like the way it felt. So, he went without it and conquered Goliath using his skill set.

Just the same, you shouldn’t try to change the personality of your brand to suit the recommendations of a consultant or columnist. Stick with the things that got your here and focus on your strengths to take down the Goliath in your business.

I was recently interviewed by Tim Schroeder of emonetized.com about how how I got started in affiliate marketing, my biggest learning experience to date, biggest success, and how I learned the business.

Also, who would play me if a movie were made about my life, how often I check my stats, and my explanation of affiliate marketing, so a child could understand it.

There is a new way to get free Gold passes to Affiliate Summit West 2010, taking place January 17-19, 2010 in Las Vegas.

I’ve been posting codes daily for the last month or so, but it’s come to my attention that some people have supposedly figured out a way to cheat the system.

I haven’t been able to verify that it’s happening, or whether it’s just an empty claim from some digital gangster in his mom’s basement. Either way, I’m changing up the way these codes are made available.

Moving forward, the codes will be announced on the voicemail of a new phone number – the voicemail will be updated at random times and then a Tweet will go out to announce that a new code is up there (if you don’t want to make the call to NJ, there will be an alternate way to get the info.).

Here is an action shot of me setting up the first code voicemail.

Since this process is a little more involved, I will probably do it five days a week, and then either Monday or Friday the code will be good for three uses to account for the missed weekend days.

Otherwise, just as it was in the past, the code will only work for the first person to successfully enter it in.

Follow @affiliatesummit and/or @affiliatetip on Twitter for more details.

Rae will be joined by Greg Boser, President of 3 Dog Media, LLC (@GregBoser); Michael Gray, President of Atlas Web (@graywolf); and Michael Streko, Co-Founder of KnowEm.com (@Streko) for an SEO Site Review/Clinic at Affiliate Summit West 2010, taking place January 17-19, 2010 in Las Vegas.